vladman
11-11-2006, 04:40 AM
Hi all,
First of all sorry for the long post, hope you can bear with me.
Ever since I built my new system a month or so ago, I've been reading up everything P5B related on this board with keen interest. I originally built my new system using an old IDE drive, but have recently purchased two new SATA II drives, and decided to do a complete reinstall, so as to benefit from the advantages of the SATA drives, and more importantly, from changing the SATA controller in BIOS from IDE to AHCI (I don't intend to use RAID). Even though I'm aware the real-world benefits of this change are probably quite small, I want everything to be "just right". :)
So anyway, after reading pretty much the entire P5B Deluxe Problems and Fixes thread, and many other relevant ones on this forum, and a lot of stuff from other boards and sites on the Internet, I'm still a little bit (possibly an understatement) confused as to the definitive, correct, least trouble-free way one's supposed to install Windows XP Pro onto a non-raid SATA drive.
I already did it once, but messed it up, so I'm doing it again right now, as I type this on my other computer.
I created the Intel Matrix Storage (and JMicron) RAID/SATA floppy disks (to use at the F6 prompt when installing Windows - I tried to install without using this floppy and Windows Setup disk (with SP2 incorporated) wouldn't detect any drives), set both SATA controllers in BIOS to AHCI, and went and installed Windows, using the Intel floppy disk at the F6 prompt (because I connected both drives to the Intel SATA ports, I'm only using the JMicron IDE port for my DVD writer), chose the correct chipset AHCI driver, and proceeded with the installation. Everything went well, Windows installed, and the computer booted into it ok (I did notice a delay in detecting my SATA drives at POST after a reboot, that others have mentioned too. Also the drives get detected as IDE drives, is this normal?).
I then went to install the rest of the drivers that relate to the motherboard (LAN, Audio, Wireless, etc.). One thing where I'm confused is the JMicron RAID driver. Do I need this, if I only intend to use that controller for my IDE DVD writer? Should I even set it to IDE (rather than AHCI) in BIOS? I saw a couple of posts here where people were having similar doubts, and it's still unclear to me whether this needs to be installed, and if so how, to avoid all sorts of problems, such as Unknown Devices in Device Manager (the problem I had after the first attempt), etc.
Also, I noticed after the first install attempt, after I ran HD Tune, my HDs weren't displaying their "Health" status, nor were their capabilities identified correctly, whereas all of this worked fine when I originally connected the drives to the machine whilst the old IDE drive was still the primary drive with the OS installed on it.
Basically, all of this to do with SATA, RAID, AHCI, and other related settings is still not 100% clear to me, and I have a feeling I might not be doing everything right.
I'd be very grateful for any clear and concise pointers/suggestions/advice/opinon on how best to go about resolving all these issues in the most optimal way.
P.S. Yes, I'm still on the 0711 BIOS, I'm a little reluctant to upgrade to 0804 as I also read some people experienced problems after doing this, and weren't even able to undo them by reverting back to 0711.
P.P.S. Windows just finished installing. Before doing anything else I'm ghosting the image to a DVD. The process is taking aaaaaaaages to complete (37 minutes so far, 8 minutes to complete) indicating my DVD drive is operating below its optimal speed, another issue I saw other people were having trouble with...
Sigh... But I shall persist! :)
First of all sorry for the long post, hope you can bear with me.
Ever since I built my new system a month or so ago, I've been reading up everything P5B related on this board with keen interest. I originally built my new system using an old IDE drive, but have recently purchased two new SATA II drives, and decided to do a complete reinstall, so as to benefit from the advantages of the SATA drives, and more importantly, from changing the SATA controller in BIOS from IDE to AHCI (I don't intend to use RAID). Even though I'm aware the real-world benefits of this change are probably quite small, I want everything to be "just right". :)
So anyway, after reading pretty much the entire P5B Deluxe Problems and Fixes thread, and many other relevant ones on this forum, and a lot of stuff from other boards and sites on the Internet, I'm still a little bit (possibly an understatement) confused as to the definitive, correct, least trouble-free way one's supposed to install Windows XP Pro onto a non-raid SATA drive.
I already did it once, but messed it up, so I'm doing it again right now, as I type this on my other computer.
I created the Intel Matrix Storage (and JMicron) RAID/SATA floppy disks (to use at the F6 prompt when installing Windows - I tried to install without using this floppy and Windows Setup disk (with SP2 incorporated) wouldn't detect any drives), set both SATA controllers in BIOS to AHCI, and went and installed Windows, using the Intel floppy disk at the F6 prompt (because I connected both drives to the Intel SATA ports, I'm only using the JMicron IDE port for my DVD writer), chose the correct chipset AHCI driver, and proceeded with the installation. Everything went well, Windows installed, and the computer booted into it ok (I did notice a delay in detecting my SATA drives at POST after a reboot, that others have mentioned too. Also the drives get detected as IDE drives, is this normal?).
I then went to install the rest of the drivers that relate to the motherboard (LAN, Audio, Wireless, etc.). One thing where I'm confused is the JMicron RAID driver. Do I need this, if I only intend to use that controller for my IDE DVD writer? Should I even set it to IDE (rather than AHCI) in BIOS? I saw a couple of posts here where people were having similar doubts, and it's still unclear to me whether this needs to be installed, and if so how, to avoid all sorts of problems, such as Unknown Devices in Device Manager (the problem I had after the first attempt), etc.
Also, I noticed after the first install attempt, after I ran HD Tune, my HDs weren't displaying their "Health" status, nor were their capabilities identified correctly, whereas all of this worked fine when I originally connected the drives to the machine whilst the old IDE drive was still the primary drive with the OS installed on it.
Basically, all of this to do with SATA, RAID, AHCI, and other related settings is still not 100% clear to me, and I have a feeling I might not be doing everything right.
I'd be very grateful for any clear and concise pointers/suggestions/advice/opinon on how best to go about resolving all these issues in the most optimal way.
P.S. Yes, I'm still on the 0711 BIOS, I'm a little reluctant to upgrade to 0804 as I also read some people experienced problems after doing this, and weren't even able to undo them by reverting back to 0711.
P.P.S. Windows just finished installing. Before doing anything else I'm ghosting the image to a DVD. The process is taking aaaaaaaages to complete (37 minutes so far, 8 minutes to complete) indicating my DVD drive is operating below its optimal speed, another issue I saw other people were having trouble with...
Sigh... But I shall persist! :)